A pox on both your houses

It’s easy to understand why Republicans favor legal (and illegal) immigration and work visas: they like cheap labor. (Democrats favor illegal immigration because they like their votes.)

FoxNews

I’m not sure which dog Rupert Murdoch and son (owners of FoxNews) have in this fight. I guess it may be because they receive major advertising income through Karl Rove’s traditional Republican buddies. The Murdochs see Trump as a threat to Fox’s juicy revenue stream.

It was clear that Fox’s Megyn Kelly, Chris Matthews, and Bret Baier were following marching orders to trash Mr. Trump. (It’s ironic that he alone was the magnet that attracted 24 million viewers.)

I thought that Mr. Trump handily dodged their bullets and returned fire just fine. Good for him. Americans need jobs.

So, what else is new? We’re accustomed to Facebook privacy breaches. The new feature of this leak is that amongst the leaked data are data that you didn’t provide to Facebook. Yes, Facebook collects data about you from everywhere and stores them in your Facebook user record. Did you know that? For those unfortunate 6 million Facebook users, that data was also leaked.

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A new client’s business has a few bad reviews on his Google Places page. Some are over a year old. Surprisingly, he was unaware of them. Why? He lives within AOL’s walled garden. All his searches are done within AOL, so he never saw the negative reviews outside AOL’s walls. (I guess that someone else created his Google Places page.)

AOL is an anachronism, but the caveat of avoiding walled gardens applies if you use any site that tries to confine its users. Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, and Google+ are like Las Vegas casinos: they want to keep their visitors confined within territory that they control. Do you want Search? We’ve got it. Want email? We’ve got it. Want to buy something? We’ve got that too. Want a haircut? A shoeshine? A snack? A dinner? The casino — and AOL, Facebook, Linkedin, et al — wants every asset you’ve got.

On the Internet, the walled gardens want to extract everything they can from you, whether it’s your money or information about you, which they eventually sell to advertisers in exchange for targeted ads directed at you. That’s how they make money. A Facebook user exclaimed, “Facebook has never asked me for one dime!”. Of course not; he’s told Facebook all about himself. That information goes into Facebook’s finished goods inventory, which they sell to advertisers.

Think about it. When you’re on Facebook (or AOL et al), Facebook captures every keystroke and mouse click. Read their Terms Of Service (TOS); they can do whatever they wish with that data, including selling it to third parties.

If you’re a business owner, don’t be confined to any walled garden, and respond quickly to negative reviews, regardless of where they appear. A happy customer will tell a prospect; an unhappy customer will tell ten prospects. On the web, an unhappy customer can tell millions of prospects.

Months ago, Facebook acquired Glancee, a small company that had developed a smartphone app that used smartphones’ GPS information to locate people. Facebook renamed it Friendshake, while they tested it within their Facebook mobile apps. In June they renamed it “Find Friends Nearby” (FFN) and quietly rolled it out.

The FFN app was quickly dubbed “the stalker’s app” and within 10 days of release, Facebook withdrew it. You can see if it works or not by going to www.fb.com/ffn.

I’m surprised that Facebook and other social networks can change their games’ rules, as the games are being played. What sort of Terms Of Service (TOS) have Facebook users signed? Apparently it’s a carte blanche.

If you provide an online service, try to change your privacy policy. Most jurisdictions will require that all existing users first agree to the change. The U.S. is lax in its privacy protection, but the EU is strict. I won’t be surprised if they bring suit against Facebook over “Find Friends Nearby”.

Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg recognizes a good social networking idea when he sees one, so Facebook recently paid a billion dollars to acquire Instagram. iPhone users can upload photos directly to Instagram, and choose to make them publicly available or share them with friends only. Instagram can polish and then distribute your photos to multiple image-sharing sites. It sounds like Facebook without words.

Instagram has helped share ideas across borders because no language translation is necessary. It’s only about 18 months old and has yet to make a profit, so its sale to Facebook represents an excellent ROI by its founders.

I’ve noticed, while watching people browse the web, that some people simply aren’t comfortable with words. They communicate best with images. They’ll love Instagram.

Facebook continues to skate on thin privacy ice. Until now, if you posted on Facebook, you posted contemporary information about yourself. Facebook just announced Timeline, which allows you to post your entire personal history as well.

This is great for Facebook. With personal history information from millions of Facebook users, Facebook will be able to charge even more money for access to that information. Facebook’s users won’t see one penny of that revenue.

What’s scarey is that when you place a “Visit my Facebook page” link, you’ll be inviting people to learn all about you.

What do I do with Facebook? Nothing. I don’t trust Facebook because of its continued lack of respect for user privacy. In fact, Facebook’s business model is built upon disrespect for personal privacy.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, noting that he developed Facebook’s software by using open-source software, has published Facebook’s newest data center design so that it can be copied by others. This new data center will open next month in rural Prineville, Orgeon.

It sounds like an innovative design. They run 3-phase 480/277 Volt electrical power directly to each server, to reduce step-down transformer losses. (This is very unconventional: I’ve never heard of it being done before.) They claim that each server’s power supply has an efficiency of 94%! They cool the servers by using prevailing winds and evaporative water cooling. (This is reminiscent of the whole-house coolers seen in relatively low-humidity Kansas.)

They use a power line reactor to condition incoming power and correct power factor. (This will lower utility costs.) Apparently there’s a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) using 48 VDC batteries, which are much better than 12 VDC batteries for each row of server racks. Lighting is provided by LEDs that are supplied by power over Ethernet. (I want to see this!)

Read about the ground-up data center design and construction in this Facebook engineering note. Be sure to watch the video. This is a startling statement: “The result is that our Prineville data center uses 38 percent less energy to do the same work as Facebook’s existing facilities, while costing 24 percent less.” This summarizes why opening your designs makes sense: “opening the technology means the community will make advances that we wouldn’t have discovered if we had kept it secret.”

I applaud Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook. Microsoft, Google, and other data center owners jealously guard their data center details. (Occasionally, information leaks out. Read What exactly is inside a Google data center?) Mr. Zuckerberg points out that there’s no reason to be so secretive: Why not allow the world to benefit from your data center design innovations?

Share this design

A project to open data center design, opencompute.org, plans to open the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of data centers so that anyone may use those designs. (The site contains Facebook’s design specs in PDF files that may be downloaded.) I think that this is great. Let’s hope that this trend continues throughout the computing hardware AND software realms. I hope that proprietary accounting software will be replaced soon by open-source accounting software. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

Facebook’s Open compute servers

Facebook server inside data center

Facebook’s power supplies used by the open compute servers. One plug is for DC the other is AC power.

Facebook server stack

Facebook manager of hardware design Amir Michael holds a component from a data drive at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Thursday, April 7, 2011. Seeking to transform the energy efficiency of global data centers, Facebook today launched the Open Compute Project, an initiative to share the custom-engineered technology in its first dedicated data center in Prineville, Oregon. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Facebook data center LED lighting

Rear of open compute server. Here you can see the back of 4 open compute servers with 4 fans and 1 hard drive per server.

Here’s a look at the triplet rack of open compute servers. The blue cabinet is the UPS for two triplet racks.

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Use Facebook more securely (in exchange for giving them more information about yourself).

Logo: Facebook.com

Facebook announces one time password security enhancement. I like this idea: when logging on to Facebook from a non-secure computer, use your cell phone to send a text message to Facebook, which will reply with a one-time use password (which will expire in 20 minutes). Even if someone does capture this password (via WiFi or a keylogger), it won’t work for them after 20 minutes.

The downside? Now you have provided Facebook with even more personal information. Read yesterday’s article subtitled “Facebook and other social network sites are exploiting people’s urge to share, says BT [British Telecom] security chief Schneier”. In the article, Schneier states, “Don’t think you are users of sites like Facebook. We’re Facebook’s product that they sell to their customers”.

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Web designer who employed Zuckerberg in 2003 claims that he owns 84% of Facebook

Paul Ceglia, who employed Mark Zuckerberg in 2003, claims that Mr. Zuckerberg, in writing, gave him rights to 84% of "The Face Book", which was a pet project that Zuckerberg was working on. Mr. Ceglia has filed suit in New York state court. He claims that he has a signed contract with Mr. Zuckerberg.

Previously, fellow Harvard classmates claimed that Zuckerberg appropriated code from the school’s ConnectU project. They settled out of court.

The most recent claim could prevent Facebook from going public, as the court has issued an injunction on trading of its shares. Facebook is now (foolishly) valued at over 24 billion dollars. (Does anyone want to buy a Dutch tulip?)

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, answered some of his critics in a Washington Post column on Monday. His article promises that in the near future, Facebook users will have easier and more complete control over their information. In the article, he states, "Here are the principles under which Facebook operates:

You have control over how your information is shared.

We do not share your personal information with people or services you don’t want.

On Wednesday, Facebook announced that they were revising user privacy controls . . . to mixed reviews. Most of the criticism is aimed at the fact that any action should be required by the user to opt-out of revealing his data. Critics think that opting-out of sharing should be Facebook’s default privacy setting; if a user is not concerned with privacy, he should be required to opt-in to share his data with the public.

Meanwhile, there’s a feature movie about Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook waiting in the wings. Directed by A-lister David Fincher and titled The Social Network, it’s scheduled for release this autumn. It will reportedly paint an unflattering picture of Mr. Zuckerberg.

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Facebook announces that it will, um . . . make an important announcement Real Soon Now.

On Friday Facebook announced that it will do something to make its privacy policies easier to understand. According to this Wall Street Journal story, Facebook is undergoing internal dissent amongst its employees regarding its users’ privacy. It’s certainly facing attacks from outside: On May 7, Wired Magazine called for an Open alternative to Facebook. The European Commission says that it’s "’Unacceptable’ for social networking sites to make some profile information public by default".

Facebook’s reaction to increasing criticism will have a major financial impact on its future:

Its advertisers will pay premium prices for targeted ads only if Facebook and its advertisers know as much as possible about each Facebook user.

I think that Facebook is headed toward an IPO. Its initial share price will be affected by negative publicity and users continuing to jump ship.

Two unhappy Facebook users created a website called Quitfacebookday.com, on which they recommend that Facebook users quit en masse on 31 May.

Leo Laporte, who’s well known for his weekly podcasts and webcasts aimed at techies, restated this weekend that he’s happy that he quit Facebook last week. People in his chat room, filled with about 1000 visitors, responded that their Facebook messages about deleting their Facebook accounts had been mysteriously removed.

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Facebook did it again: it changed its privacy policy and defaulted all existing users to its lowest privacy settings. The EFF documented Facebook’s dwindling user privacy in an April article titled Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline.

I don’t use Facebook and don’t recommend it. If you’re a Facebook user, have you read the Facebook Terms Of Service? Like Google (Gmail, Google Docs, etc), Facebook allows you to keep copyright to your material but asserts its right to do whatever it wishes with your material. Of course Facebook wishes to make money by selling your material to whoever wants it — most especially, businesses that want to sell their goods and services to you. (Facebook’s Terms of Service may differ for you if you are not in the United States.)

All this is more or less academic to me: as I said, I don’t use Facebook. In the interest of full disclosure, I must add that repairing damage done to Facebook users’ computers by the Koobface worm contributes to my income.

Read about the very real threat posed by Koobface. I know a woman whose bank accounts were debited following an infection that began on Facebook with a message from her husband that asked her to view a video. She was then asked to update her Flash player, which started the infection . . . About a month later, mysterious bank account debits appeared.

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If, while using Facebook, Myspace, or Friendster, you receive a message from a supposed friend with a subject such as "you look funny in this new video" or "is it u there?", delete the message wihout reading it.

If you open the message and click on the video link, you’ll be taken to a Youtube-like site (which actually includes the word "youtube" in its domain name) which will tell you that your Flash player is out of date. If you click on the Download button, you’ll install the Koobface worm. This worm installs itself on your computer and (1) searches your PC’s cookies for credit card data and (2) waits for you to purchase something online. Once the Koobface worm captures your credit card data it uploads your credit card data to the bad guy(s), and you’re sunk.

Koobface takes advantage of the trusting nature of social networking sites’ users, who think that messages may be sent from bona fide friends only. (They’re wrong: infected computers propagate the worm to other Facebook users without permission of the computers’ owners.) The lesson? On the Internet, Trust no one.

There are many Koobface variants. Facebook security recommends that you reset your Facebook password and scan your computer for viruses with an up to date scanner. Read more: http://www.kaspersky.com/news?id=207575670

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Gordon Welchman was an Englishman who, while working on decoding German messages at Bletchley Park during World War II, invented traffic analysis. His idea was that even if one couldn’t decipher message contents, just tabulating who messaged whom, when, and how frequently, lent knowledge about the enemy.

After the war, he emigrated to America, where he became an American citizen and taught the first computer course at M.I.T. He worked for Remington Rand and eventually for the MITRE Corporation, where he enhanced traffic analysis technology and helped develop C3 (Command, Control, and Communication) systems.

Following the publication of his book The Hut Six Story in 1982, which detailed the work of his Hut Six group at Bletchley Park, his security clearance was revoked. This killed his career in intelligence.

Well, both snowboarding and skiing. Reminds me of water skiing. The middle east coast states received buckets of snow this weekend and these New Yorkers made the best of it. Yes, that looks like Broadway in Times Square.

“It re-writes the history of technology.”

I love this parody. It’s a humorous advertisement for your own mail server:

Do you run a government agency but hate complying with the law? Then you need DC Matic, the Hillary Clinton-approved email server!

credit: Written and performed by Remy. Video directed and edited by Meredith Bragg

What’s Hillary hiding? Classified emails? Sure. Evidence of her negligence in Benghazi that led to the murders of US citizens? Of course. Security breaches via assistant Huma Abedin’s Muslim Brotherhood connections? Probably. No, the ticking time bomb in this server is bribery. Maybe treason as well. She’s hiding written evidence of her deals that traded State Department help in exchange for large donations to the Clinton Foundation and large fees for speaking engagements by Bill Clinton.

Both Swope and Obama were elected to office by fools who suffer from chronic white guilt.

In 1969, Putney Swope announced:

The changes I’m gonna make will be minimal. I’m not gonna rock the boat. Rockin’ the boat’s a drag. What you do is sink the boat.

In 2008, Barack Obama bragged:

. . . we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

Mr. Obama is trying to transform America, alright. Transform it from a prosperous capitalist economy governed by a constitutional republic to a bankrupt socialist economy governed by a corrupt tyrannical dictatorship. Barack is following Putney’s credo, “What you do is sink the boat.”

The tune, “Slow Down”, is performed on piano and sung by its composer, Larry Williams. He was from New Orleans (of course). The tune, ringing with ninth chords, was released on disc in 1958. I think that the dancers are from a 1950s Hollywood rock & roll movie. Larry also composed Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Bad Boy, and Bony Moronie — classic rock tunes, all. He was born in 1935 and died on this date, January 7, in 1980.

In the mid-1950s, Williams inherited star billing from Little Richard (who’d forsaken rock and roll for religion) at New Orleans’ record label Specialty Records.

While Williams was alive, the Beatles paid their respects by admirably covering Larry’s Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Slow Down, and Bad Boy. I’m amazed that Larry Williams isn’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Extra credit assignment: Compare and contrast the Beatles’ cover of Slow Down with Larry Williams’ original. This clip includes the fab four wailing in Liverpool’s Cavern Club: (If YouTube has taken down this video clip, you can hear the same recording with groovy rock and roll clips (sorry — requires Flash) from 1950s America and early Beatles. Sorry for the Flash format.)

I’m delighted to discover that the video of Joni Mitchell’s classic Shadows and Light concert (1980) can be viewed in full (1h 13m) on YouTube. Supporting players are Jaco Pastorius on bass, Pat Metheny on guitar, Michael Brecker on sax, Don Alias on drums, Lyle Mays on keyboards, and The Persuasions. It’s among my favorite videos of a concert performance.

Jaco Pastorius

Jaco was a Fort Lauderdale kid who began playing in rock bands around town in a variety of clubs: She, The 4 O’Clock CLub, The Village Zoo, The Flying Machine, The Button, Bachelors III, Ocean Mist . . . When I first heard Jaco in the early 1970s, he was playing bass for straight-ahead local rock bands. He graduated to more jazz- and fusion- related music and put his unique fretless Fender bass stamp on Weather Report. I’ve heard bass players tell me that they tried to imitate Jaco’s technique, but gave up trying; they claim that Jaco changed what it meant to play electric bass guitar. Jaco’s friend Pat Metheny, who plays a beautiful lead guitar in this concert, is a University of Miami music school graduate.

Jaco seemed to still have his act together when he played this concert. Wikipedia has a good Jaco biography. He had a rapid rise to the top followed by a quick ride back down again. I had musician friends c 1984-87 who were torn up watching their friend Jaco dismantle his life. This Warner Brothers recording artist and Down Beat Hall of Fame member was sleeping on park benches and shooting baskets in a local public park.

Michael Brecker and Don Alias died a few years ago.

This is a classic performance by master musicians who were at the top of their games. Too bad it couldn’t last forever.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, the FCC is considering disciplining NBC for airing an indecent performance on July 6, Miley Cyrus’ “Bangerz Tour”. I watched it. It was provocative, but artful. Bertolt Brecht would have loved the production: live dancers against rear-projection oversized animation with creative costumes and lighting. I loved it. Some of the images, such as Miley riding a giant “Mr. Wiener”, were sexually suggestive.

Click to stream or download full 862 Megabyte video performance

The concert (recorded in Barcelona) reminded me of Madonna’s shows twenty-five years ago. Both performers have acceptable contralto voices, energetic dance skills, and assemble exciting Brechtian spectacles. I love the costuming and choreopgraphy. Shocking? “Bangerz” pushed the limits on prime-time American TV, I suppose. But that week on television, the atrocious performance by the Brazilian football team was truly shocking.

I’d prefer that the FCC take no action on this. They have enough serious issues on their plate already. Censoring art is, in my opinion, a slippery slope for any government agency . . . and I think that this production can be labeled “art”. Here’s the full show (862MB H264 1h 25m mp4 video file, 720 x 404 pixel) for download or streaming:

Click to stream or download full 862 Megabyte video performance

You’ll need a fast Internet connection to smoothly stream this. You might be better to download the file and then play it locally with a good video player such as VLC.

Is it Miley’s performance or just modern low distortion recording technique that for the first time makes John Lennon’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” lyrics (at 44m 35s) sound so . . . so . . . clear, logical, and complete?

I’ve worked with integrated circuits (I.C.s) since the 1960s, but haven’t been involved in their manufacture — only their application.

Intel Haswell wafer with a pin for scalephoto: Intel Free PressToday’s integrated circuit manufacture is a high stakes capital intensive business whose players use trade secrets to maintain their market advantage. I’ve never been inside an I.C. “fab” (factory), so it was a treat to find an hour-long presentation by an industry manufacturing engineer on YouTube. The technologies used at nano dimensions are mind-boggling.

Here’s the excellent presentation, in full:

The speaker mentions that lithographic imaging of the mask is now being done at 193 nanometer (nm). As you can see, we’re well above visible light and on our way to x-rays(!). Here’s the electromagnetic spectrum in that region:

Click for full-sizegraphic by: Shigeru23
The presentation is aimed at the layperson and is filled with surprises. For instance, one gigabyte of semiconductor memory can be produced on a flat substrate within the diameter of a human hair. I give it two (gloved) thumbs up.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. — Steve Jobs

I’m the one that’s gonna have to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to. — Jimi Hendrix

I just listened to an excellent interview with Walt Mossberg, who since 1991 wrote a weekly computer industry column for the Wall Street Journal. Walt’s now retired. Leo Laporte, an industry podcaster, coaxes some great stories from Mr. Mossberg.

Walt’s perspective was always that of a user — not a tech freak. Most industry reporters are techies who don’t appreciate that most of us don’t care about the inner workings and secret mechanisms of computers.

Walt speaks a bit about his long relationships with both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. (Walt sat in the passenger seat as Gates, frustrated by traffic, drove his Lexus for miles on the road’s shoulder.)

In the 1970s and early 1980s, I loved ABBA’s music. I was pleased to discover this recent critique, in both spoken and written form. I didn’t realize that ABBA were considered politically incorrect in their home country.

Intelligent Life magazine‘s Matthew Sweet observes that ABBA’s songs progressed from naiveté through sophistication to melancholy. As Matthew says, “Many of their songs are about accepting the failure of relationships”.

Here’s the companion article, Thank You for the Music, by Matthew Sweet, from a recent issue of Intelligent Life. Both the article and the audio clip stem from his visit to Stockholm’s ABBA Museum.

These observations will help you get the most from your swimming. (They’re from Australian podcast Effortless Swimming). Each is a short audio clip of less than ten minutes. (The first truth is that one or two swim workouts a week won’t cut it.)

Now that not just one, but two movies (Breaking The Code and The Imitation Game) have been produced about Alan Turing, it’s time we had a movie about Ada Lovelace. She seems to have possessed an unusual combination of precise reasoning and imagination, strong will, and feminine charm. Plus, she was in the middle of a tug o war between her feuding parents, poet Lord Byron and his wife Anne Isabella.

Why is Ada important? She’s acknowledged to be the first computer programmer (c 1840!). Like Mozart and Turing, her life was tragically cut short at a young age. I propose this biopic today because it’s Ada Lovelace Day!

If you’re using Windows 7 or 8.1, and you’re sick of being nagged by Microsoft’s pop-up to upgrade to Windows 10, go to the Ultimate Outsider website and download and install their GWX Control Panel. It’s received rave reviews. Cost: gratis. Here’s the full description.

New and Improved Method

Update, April 3, 2016: Steve Gibson, founder of GRC (Gibson Research Corp), has written a great little freeware utility that also blocks upgrades to Windows 10. Steve writes most of his code in assembler, so his utilities are tiny. He calls this newest utility Never10. He’s created a page dedicated to Never10, where you may download it for free. It’s only 81 kilobyes in size and doesn’t require installation on your Windows PC. You need just run it once to turn off upgrades to Windows 10, and run it again to allow upgrades to Windows 10. Short and sweet, it’s just what the doctor ordered.

Installing two or more application programs on a PC can chew up your time as you wade through web pages, download prompts that don’t always work, and questions and answers. Now ninite.com (http://ninite.com/) does this tedious work for you. I’ve tried it on a few PCs and it’s worked flawlessly. Install everything in one easy step on your brand-new Windows 7 PC!